children of Israel

1:3 children of Israel. Evidently, if these men were to “stand in the king’s palace” (Daniel 1:4) and were placed under “the master of the eunuchs,” the four Hebrew children must have consented to be made eunuchs in order to have a testimony for God in the Babylonian capital, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 39:5-7. These may well have been in the mind of Christ when He said that some “have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake” (Matthew 19:12).